transcription estimate and best practices inquiry

[Rankin, Robert L]

The variables here are many and all are important.  

First, I think it is likely that few to none of the current Omaha speakers can be considered "native" in the sense in which it's used in South America.  To me "native" implies native language *dominant*.  I feel that most of the Omaha speakers are now English-dominant, even if they remember Omaha pretty well.  This will make for some interference from English.  

Second, my students in intro linguistics always had problems transcribing English.  Part of the problem was the newness of phonetic transcription and interference from English spelling, but part of it was the fluid nature of colloquial English speech registers.  No matter how fluent the speaker, transcription takes lots of practice unless the person is a phonetic prodigy.  

Third, as for linguists, it will depend on how well you really know the language.  It took me quite awhile to become confident of my ability to distinguish the 4 manners of stops, especially the difference between CC and Ch.  It seems so simple and obvious now, but then -- not so much.  Long and short vowels were even worse.  I missed them pretty much entirely for over a decade.  Finally I figured out that the accented ones were pretty easy; they had falling pitch in discourse.  I thought I had it figured out until I realized that the unaccented ones didn't usually have the pitch contour.  Nasal vs. oral vowels following nasal consonants remains a problem in many environments.  Transcribing Kaw stories from recordings I made myself, I still have trouble.  Allowing 20 hours per story doesn't seem unreasonable to me at all.  If it takes less time after awhile, so much the better.

Fourth, words in isolation can sometimes be even worse.  The problems of list intonation and the influence of near-homonyms recently discussed arise.  Since I went through the Dorsey Kaw dictionary in alphabetical order, inflection of one verb often contaminated discussion of the next verb in line.  I made all the common mistakes, believe me.  Someday some young linguist looking for a dissertation topic will get hold of my elicitation CDs and write a treatise on how NOT to do field work.  And this was after two years of dialect field work in Romania and a good methodology course (and a pretty fair ear if I do say so myself).  

As for the English "asides" on the tapes, my field methods instructor, Larry Thompson the Salishanist, encouraged us to write down all the comments offered by the speaker(s).  They often contain insights the importance of which only emerges much later, and if you didn't write them down, they're gone.  You'll have to use your own judgment, but I'd say that any comment that has to do with the language is worth noting.

Bob


-----Original Message-----
> Aloha all,
> I need some guidance!
>
> I am pulling together a grant proposal to begin field checking the 20K
> JODorsey slip lexicon that is emerging from my NEH Omaha and Ponca Digital
> Dictionay project.
>
> Catherine Rudin and I will work with Omaha speakers to confirm lexemes,
> fill in inflected forms, elicit contemporary-context sample sentences, and
> other cultural information.
>
> We will concentrate on digitally audio recording the sessions.
>
> Video remains problematic for my speakers.
>
> As we all know, a one hour session will have many false starts and other
> chit chat.
>
> *1) What are your thoughts about editing out that material prior to
> transcription?*
>
> Rory Larson and I worked with our UNL speakers last year to test out the
> field checking process. We captured some very rich materials. However, the
> majority of clock time was in English, less in Omaha.
>
> My thoughts are to hire one or more GTAs to do the first pass of
> transcription for the English while flagging the Omaha for me to handle.
>
> I am investigating the ELAN software program and appreciate David Rood and
> Iren Hartmann's input on that.
>
> I expect we would do a simple 'first pass' of straight transcription at
> this point.
>
> *2) What have been your experiences with estimates of time required to do
> a 'simple' transcription of English?*
> **
> *3) What about the Native language transcription time?*
> **
> Many thanks for considering this.
>
> Mark
>
>
> Mark Awakuni-Swetland, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor of Anthropology
> and Ethnic Studies (Native American Studies)
> University of Nebraska
> Lincoln, NE 68588-0368
>
> http://omahalanguage.unl.edu
> http://omahaponca.unl.edu
> Phone 402-472-3455
> FAX: 402-472-9642
>